WatchGuard XTM [EOL] Reviews

We use WatchGuard XTM as a privileged access management solution.

I used another product that was supposed to be a firewall but was the wrong kind of thing. I complained about that unstable product and we switched to WatchGuard, which has been good. It's a good product. 

The signature features of WatchGuard XTM are valuable. The product is also recommended for power firewall settings. Fireware is a good feature.

WatchGuard XTM is fairly basic. We use it as the perimeter firewall. The main point is to protect from attack software and hacking. 

In my opinion, image clarity is very important, because I don't get the proper image product on reports. This means that functionality is not there.

My engineer does not know how he can replace an order. We attach a log after any kind of keys using a utility instead. 

For the internet policies that we are implementing, the policy should be based on proper protocols. We use the default policies and there are a number of third-party protocols that appear here.

Management with WatchGuard XTM means that out of policy is the problem from our side. In this way, we can not do effective services for people with this one. 

The policy definition with WatchGuard XTM is not proper for all use case requirements. 

I've got weekly business reports that I am expecting attachments with from WatchGuard XTM that display data for all kinds of consideration which should be required. 

Main User Functionality Level Order must adhere to using the admin functionality on the registry, or else our users publish their own name. 

Maybe these recommendations are irrelevant, but I say that the issue to improve most with WatchGuard XTM is the Main User Function.

We haven't had any issues with scalability. 

Scalability depends on a deeper number network and a different number of requirements. We are using a range of network addresses per person here, for the norm, and expecting to boost further without a problem. 

Currently, we have connected about fifteen hundred users with plans to increase the usage. We are expanding. Right now, there is no next product solution upgrade scheduled. 

Most of the competitors to WatchGuard XTM provide the same kind of setup.

Technical support with WatchGuard XTM is handled by my team. 

The setup is straightforward and not complex. WatchGuard XTM is very neat and simple. It took around three months to complete.

We had a consultant for the deployment. One woman was here to assist us with implementation.

This product is made well in the sense of prospective functionality, which may not arrange properly for report constitution, i.e. helping us to constitute reports. 

What we are looking for is reports on:

• Which bandwidth users were getting registered on.
• Which users received high instead of low bandwidth. 
• Internet using functionally: what kind of person is using the internet. 
• What kind of files they have downloaded.
• The variety of web/mobile traffic devices used. 

I'm not sure of WatchGuard XTM has feature support for all of these. The support in these areas can be improved or needs to be better learned.

I would advise other users to pay attention to what kind of IT policy you are configuring. That kind of support is important when implementing WatchGuard XTM.

One huge issue with WatchGuard XTM is that I'm not getting reports in a readable format. Readable means, I don't want Excel online. We repeat auditing when we trigger the report or setup calendar. 

That functionality is what we are looking for from WatchGuard XTM here. It needs to have better functionality where you can see images in reports.

When I'm looking at the reports, which we are doing in the administrative job here, we are using other software. Changing the resolution, that makes a difference for us. 

There is much that cannot be understood in the combination file but that isn't an extension file or a software problem. It is a problem with WatchGuard XTM.

What I'm looking for here are solutions that make a difference, i.e. what will the solve the problems. WatchGuard XTM provides what I am looking for in different products. I would advise someone considering this solution to put the competitors in front of you for reference.

For my take on WatchGuard XTM as a solution, I can say on a scale of one to ten, ten being the best, I would give it a six.

It is for the protection of end users and data loss protection.

Previously, the data protection was just open. There was no data security nor data logs of data misuse. After installing the product, we achieved awareness of our data protection needs and email misuse.

• Data loss protection
• Spam protection
• User email protection

I would like them to improve the product's overall protections. This would be good for all product users. E.g., let the user know of the next type of attack that is happening on the horizon. 

The stability is fine. We experience operating system issues, but these are not related to this specific product.

The scalability is fine. We now have around 567 users utilizing this product, but the numbers of users is increasing.

The technical support is fine.

Before using WatchGuard, I used Sophos and Kaspersky.

The initial setup was straightforward.

I took around 20 days to configure everything, phasing in all the features.

We used the supplier and a local person for the deployment. Our experience with them was good.

We do annual licensing.

I also did a PoC with Kaspersky and Bitdefender. We chose WatchGuard because of their great features.

Do a PoC with three products, including WatchGuard, then chose WatchGuard.

Since bandwidth is so expensive in my country being able to block sites that use a lot of bandwidth helps.

I like the HostWatch because I can see what traffic uses the most bandwidth and I can block that site.

The setting policies need improvement. It needs an easier way to do static NAT and check on what policy is being used for that specific traffic. 

In addition, easier setup policies should be provided for this solution. The administration of the product needs improvement.

It is a very stable product. We never had problems with it.

We do not have experience with the scalability of the solution.

I previously used Check Point, which does have a better ability to monitor specific traffic.

The licensing and renewal are very expensive.

Our primary use case is to use it as a gateway for our fleet of sea vessels. We have around 50 vessels that are serviced by the solution.

With WatchGuard, we see some bugs in the IT system, and can easily fix it within a few days. It is easily resolved and that is a big benefit for us.

Sometimes we have had issues with the stability of the product.

The scalability is good. Sometimes we need to buy a better hard drive to run all of the services, but overall it is good.

We have used technical support for WatchGuard many times and overall, we are satisfied with it. They are always listening and there is a good reaction time to our findings. When there are issues, they really try to resolve them.

We compared this solution to Juniper, and we find that WatchGuard is a much better product.

In order to setup the solution, it is a good idea to get an expert to help. I suggest improving the setup process.

We considered Juniper.

When considering a product like WatchGuard, the best criteria is: the anti-virus system solutions and using multiple scanners, that's basically the best way to approach an infection. WatchGuard has these important features.

The primary use case is network protection from phishing attacks and web browsing attacks. It has performed extremely well, we've had zero intrusions so far.

We can now browse or interact with the internet with confidence, knowing we can do our jobs while being protected. We don't have to worry.

The most valuable features of the solution are the subscription services that come with the product:

• Intrusion Protection - This is pretty standard across all products.
• WebBlocker - It used to be called WebSense. For a decent-sized organization that's a $200,000 product, and we get a fully-implemented version of that inside our product. 
• Data Loss Prevention - This feature is really good for sorting out the loss of credit card information or other valuable information.
• Application Control - This is fantastic with over 2,500 applications and the granularity that we can either allow people to view but not be able to log on to Facebook; or view it and log onto it if they're in the marketing department, but not play Facebook games. There are all sorts of different options like that. So it's highly granular.
• Botnet protection - Protects against phishing attacks, which is really good.
• Geolocation services - Allows us to filter out Russian attackers (for example) so they'll never attack our political systems.
• APT Blocker - This is advanced malware protection
• Reputation Enabled Defense - Indicates that some websites are so infested that it's not even worth visiting them, and therefore saving the bandwidth of going through the detection process.

And with all of those services turned on, we're still achieving about a gigabit of internet performance, which is outstanding.

On top of that, they have a reporting system which can store data over a very long period of time. Not many other firewall vendors provide a reporting system, but if they do, like Fortinet does, then you've got buy that as an additional product and that can be more than twice as expensive as the initial investment in the firewall. And without reporting over a long-term period, you're just about wasting your time.

In addition, the rate of progress of introducing new features: There's a fantastic wireless solution that provides extreme levels of security, plus user tracking/monitoring if you're a retail mall or company. The features go on and on. They just keep on coming.

It's been very stable for us. We don't have any issues with the reliability at all.

WatchGuard doesn't have a product that allows them to get into the data center. And that's just because there is no hardware to do the job. The software could do it, but there's no hardware that allows that to happen at the moment. So it doesn't scale as well as some other products, that's for sure.

Tech support has worked well for us. Most of their people are really knowledgeable.

We found that the WatchGuard product appeared to offer the widest range of protection at the best price.

It takes a bit of configuring, there's no doubt about that, because there are a lot of configuration options. That's where we get the in-depth security. It just doesn't say this side is right or this side is wrong, it looks at a lot of different metrics, so there is a fair bit to configure. But it's easy to configure, it's easy to work through the options, which makes it quite good.

It's not straightforward in the sense that you have got to know what you're doing, but it offers a lot of options to customize a solution for a particular client's needs, and our own needs. When you give that level of optimization, then you expect the setup to be just a wee bit more complex.

We evaluated a number of different brands, including Fortinet and Sophos.

Get your advice from people who know about the particular solutions that you're looking at. There's no point in asking "Mr. Sophos" what he thinks about Fortigate or WatchGuard.

I would rate WatchGuard XTM a nine out of 10 because it achieves all of our goals at a reasonable price without compromise.

For me, there are three important criteria when selecting a vendor. They must:

• offer the greatest level of protection
• not to be restricted by performance 
• provide a reporting engine that stores data over a long period of time. 

Anyone in the security industry understands that there will be intrusions at some stage, but not to have the data to go back six months and find out: "Hang on, this is where it started," is a complete disaster.

We're really happy with WatchGuard. It has worked extremely well. It has an easy to use management interface and can manage multiple units at multiple branches easily.

Instead of having to manage NAT policies and firewall policies in different Windows, in WatchGuard XTM OS, it configures in all-in-one place.

Monitoring of network activity is included in the box.

WatchGuard never stops doing improvements on their products.

Never, and I have 30 boxes installed already.

Never.

Professional grade support: They are really knowledgeable.

We previously used SonicWall and Fortinet.

The initial setup is neither simple nor complex. If you know the base in networking and how the firewall works, you will be able to figure it out.

Like all other manufacturers, there are a lot of features and different pricing. The best is to talk to a representative.

We did look at SonicWall and Fortinet, but we finally choose WatchGuard.

After it is installed, you will have plenty of time to do something else, because it is stable and does not require you to reboot all the time.

It costs less than the SO works and others (like SonicWall, Cisco, and Barracuda) without increasing so much CPU use. But if you use, for example the SSL connections (using a certificate), the memory use will increase, but having a better product is less expensive than the SonicWall SSL inspection.

I'm working for a provider, supporting the clients with MSSP. The customer client needs less attention.

Syslog (Dimension) is focused on presentation, but needs more focus on utility like SonicWall syslog (GMS/Analyzer).

For three years. I have used the following versions: M400, XTM 25-W, XTM 330, XTM 515, T50, M500, XTM 330, T30, and Fireware 11.12.4.

Yes, in previous firmwares, you have problems with leaked memory using SSL inspection, problems with Active Directory when the user exists inside more than one group, and problems with site-to-site VPNs in previous firmwares - lost connection but the enlace is still up.

No, but it depends on the hardware size.

The support is poor and lazy.

It is normal like the other market competitors. There is a site-to-site VPN configuration between others people.

I like the Sonicwall interface experience better, the VPN configurations, and Active Directory (LDAP) integration for SSO.

Blacklist IP addresses of "hackers", SNMP status monitoring and the Central Management Software.

Because of the high throughput, we created multiple LAN segments. This reduced the broadcast and the improved the security in traffic monitoring.

It's a fine product, but some features like the max bandwidth don't work well.

Also, the VPN errors are not helpful when troubleshooting.

For eight years.

Yes, a couple of firmware updates caused a factory reset.

Yes, fallback needs a lot of tweaking to work.

Good.

Yes, Cisco but the lack of management tools and knowledge made us change to WatchGuard.

Very straightforward.

Get at least a maintenance contract for the updates and take a larger WatchGuard than you need. A WatchGuard creates new ways to secure your network.

Yes. SonicWall, but the web interface takes a lot of time to find the right option.

Take a look at the WatchGuard support site. Opening an account is free and you can find there are a lot of helpful topics.

Packet filters and proxy policies are valuable features. They allow you to configure restrictions by domain name. These features are useful to block web pages which have multiple IP addresses, such as Facebook.

It was installed as two redundant XTM 850s (active-passive).

The XTM 850s perform as a general firewall and as a filter of WAN traffic. Routers are configured as a load balancer for internal VLANs and for WAN as well. Other network functionality is based on Extreme Networks equipment.

The management console and web interface are very bad. They should improve it and add more command lines and easy scripting functionality. I also suggest adding/improving smart and easy logging and debugging tools.

We have been using the solution for about 18 months.

We had a stability issue. Sometimes devices hang and it is very difficult to understand why. Sometimes we rebooted the system and it started to work, but we couldn’t understand what the issue was.

We had a scalability issue. Sometimes when we have heavy traffic, such as 100 mbp/s, we see a high CPU load.

The technical support is very bad. The price is very high, the response time is very long, and technical support does not provide a general solution. They just try to solve local, small issues. Sometimes they cannot understand standard issues and provide solutions.

We didn't use a similar solution, but we have used MicroTik routers and UNIX firewalls.

The setup was very easy.

My advice is to decrease technical support pricing and increase the quality.

I didn’t select this device.

The documentation is just for configuration. I suggest adding documents about solutions for different cases.

VPN, routing, firewall, and accessibility are the most valuable features.

It is easy to set up and provides access to the centralized environment.

It has decreased consuming excess bandwidth, restricting access to the social networks, downloading games, risk applications, and music.

It allows us to balance the different internet services and, via the rules, it gives greater capacity to the critical departments.

Licensing should be improved.

It should allow you to keep the rules that are created; at the end of the grace period, it does not allow you to create new rules but only to maintain the current ones.

The mobile administrative management applications (mobile devices) should be improved.

I have used this solution for four years.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues. There is 24/7 support from our provider.

The level of technical support is adequate. From a range 1 to 10, I would give them a 8/10 rating.

The setup was simple and workable for any non-expert user.

Simply, give this tool a try; it will generate great benefits in terms of the scalability and environment.

We evaluated other solutions such as Cisco from its extensive stock of solutions.